Discourse Analysis and Literary Theory:Closing the Gap

ROBERT DE BEAUGRANDE

It is a commonplace among faculties and departments of language thatlinguistics and literary studies are distinctive domains and that their interac­tion tends to be limited. But it would be unjustified to attribute thisdivergence to mere feelings of mutual rivalry, insecurity, or mistrust. Instead,the two domains have differed so fundamentally in their traditional concep­tions and directions that immediate interaction has been difficult on purelylogistic grounds. I shall undertake to indicate first why this was so and thenwhyrecent fundamental changes in both domains givereason to believe thatconditions are now much more auspicious for concerted interaction.

The relation or tension between the "paradigms" whereby "business asusual" was for a long time conducted in linguistics and literary studies wasunlikely to be assessed as long as the paradigms remained implicit andworked fairly smoothly. Both fields typically proceeded on the assumptionthat they could get on with their business and did not need to disclose andlegitimize what theywere up to. This tactic presupposes that the participantsshare a fairly firm and constricted consensus about what should be done andhow to go about it. Such a consensus maybe productive for a time but, if theobject of inquiry is as complex and diverse as either language or literature,sooner or later grows uncomfortable and leads to stagnation.

In addition, the "participants" to be considered here include not just theprofessionals, the linguists and literary scholars, but also the "clients" whoturn to us for expertise to apply to the learning and teaching of language orliterature. Since the onset of the 1960s,we have witnessed such a profoundtransformation of our "clientele" that we have been compelled to lay asideour reassuring certainties and scan new horizons. In this frame of mind, wesoon began to see that when our underlying "paradigms" were explicitlydisplayed, they did not fit the needs of the new clientele nearly as well as wewould like to think. This changed situation is the common impetus for recenttrends, even when the latter seem quite diverse or oriented toward moreabstruse or academic concerns.

My brief will accordingly be that a reassessment of the prospects forinteraction is needed not merely because the two fields themselves have

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made impressive progress in theory and research, but also because weurgently need a framework to design integrated language programs for arapidly evolving ambience. To a certain degree, which I shall attempt toclarify, the convergence has not been deliberate or coordinated. But I feel itboth can and should be in the coming years, when the challenges on bothfronts are virtually certain to become more complex and diversified.

Traditional ContrastsTo appreciate whythis wasso, it might be helpful to contemplate a schematicset of contrasts such as that presented in Table 1.

Table 1Traditional Contrasts

Linguistics Literary Studies

language as systemdata of the languagefieldwork/introspectionsynchronicideal speakerideal hearercommunitygeneralrules of languagestyle as choicenon-evaluativedescription of whole languageconfirmation by datatraining bymethodcollective researchtheory-centered

literary text as artifactthe canontraditionhistoricalreal author[scholar/reader]school/movementspecial/uniqueconventions of genrestyle as ornamentationevaluativeadvocacy of interpretationconfirmation by eloquencetraining by imitationindividual researchpractice-centered

Like most heuristics, this table simplifies issuesand irons out variety. Nor arethere precise criteria for determining what time span these "traditions"cover, but a rough approximation might be 1880-1970. 1

Whereas the object of linguisticswas the language(Saussure's "langue")as an abstract system,the object of literary studies was the literarytext as aconcrete artifact.Admittedly, this explicit contrast entails implicit contacts:the language can onlybe inferred from acorpus of texts,among which literaryones are often influential, while the literary text must be an instantiation ofits language. But these contacts remained largely submerged or taken forgranted, and, aswe shall see, they can be quite problematic. For the linguist,material was to be derived from data,which included all the samples of thelanguagethat could expediently be assembled and collated by means offieldwork and later, for the generativists (whose stance toward fieldworkremained uneasy), by means of introspection. For either source, all thedata-aside from special cases (such as modernist poetry) or errors in

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transcription-were held to belong equally to the language. For the literaryscholar, material came from the "canon" of literary texts established mainlyby tradition, witness the longstanding practice of anthologizing meritorious("great") works for public edification. The canon periodically underwentquiet revisions as some author or work was admitted or excluded, but thelegitimacy of having a canon and the prerogative of literary studies toestablish and cultivate it was not seriously challenged.

To stress its shift away from historical "philology," modern linguisticsprogrammatically adopted a synchronicapproach byviewing the language asa system in its current state rather than in its evolution. Linguists likeSaussure conceded that this "static" construct was a fiction, since languageis alwayschanging; but they saw no other wayto design theories and modelsthat fit their sparse notion of "system." Literary studies, in contrast,remained resolutely historical,witness such time-honored conventions asorganizing the program or personnel of literature departments bycentury orperiod and treating contemporary literature at best marginally alongside thecanon of "classics" of the past.

Linguistics worked with a construct of the idealspeakerwho "knows" thelanguage and can produce an unlimited set of utterances (or "sentences").The term "ideal" was made fashionable by the generative paradigm(Chomsky), but the "speaker" envisioned at least since Saussure had unmis­takably been an idealization. Literary studies, in contrast, was concernedwith the realauthoras a biographical and historical figure, and intense effortwas expended on documentation--for example, through official records,personal letters and diaries, contemporary comments, dates and places ofpublication, and so on.

At the other end of the transaction, linguistics assumed an idealhearer(often just called "hearer") who possesses essentially the same knowledge asthe ideal speaker and who can understand the same set of utterances. Whenintuition came into vogue, the linguist was entitled to stand in for bothspeaker and hearer, inventing sample sentences and rendering interpreta­tions-- in retrospect, a step backwards. In literary studies, however, we noticefrom the beginning a significantvacancy:the role of the readerwasusually notaddressed as an issue but tacitly occupied bythe scholar,whether an academicor a professional critic, who purported, byvirtue of status, to be the proper(qualified, discerning, and so on) reader for the literary work. Intriguingly,the traditional move was to present one's own reading in the name of the realauthor-for example, of what Shakespeare or Milton "was saying," "meant,""intended," and so on-and thus to merge author with authority, if not indeedwith an authoritarianposture. It thus seemed unnecessary and distractive totreat one's own reading as just one instance among many others, or as astatement of individual or personal response.

Whereas linguistics was concerned with the entire community of speak­ers, which the generative paradigm expresslydeclared to be "homogeneous,"

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the widest group addressed in literary studies was usually the school ormovement to which an identifiable set of real authors could be assigned byconspicuous stylistic or thematic attributes-for example, "Barock" in Ger­many and "Gongorrismo" in Spain. The name was often a label attributedin hindsight by the scholars rather than designation devised by the authorsthemselves. But either way, a name once bestowed tended to become anintegral category of literary studies, especiallyfor historical and pedagogicalpurposes.

As signalled by Saussure's landmark title Coursdelinguistiquegenerale,linguistics sought to formulate the most generalprinciples, for which the"laws" of the "sound shifts" formulated by philology had provided the mostshining examples. A premium was placed on generalizations applying to anentire language, or, better still, to all languages ("universals"). In literarystudies, much attention was accorded to the specialor even uniquequality ofthe literary work, and the high regard for detail could be seen in the commonexercise or test for students of memorizing or identifying individual poems orpassages from plays, novels, and so on.

Linguistics addressed the rulesof languageencoding the patterns, usuallyformal, which apply to all or most instances-for example, the placement of"article" before "noun" in English. Literary studies addressed the conven­tionsof genre,some of them based on form (such as for the "sestina") andsome based on theme or topic (such as "revenge tragedy"). Certain trends,such as Russian Formalism and American New Criticism, have sought tobridge this contrast by detailed formal analysis of certain genres, but theresults have remained disputatious, largely because of the problematicimplication that "literariness" or "poeticity" is something "in the language"of the text.

To the degree that it was influenced by linguistics, the study of stylecentered on the notion of choice-that is, the selection of certain optionsoffered by the overall language system. In the literary domain, the notion ofstyle as ornamentation persisted-an aesthetically pleasing addition of"schemes" and "tropes" which students should be taught to name andidentify with erudite terms like "synecdoche." The "content" or the "mes­sage" of the work was typicallyheld to exist apart from this ornamentation.

In programmatic opposition to traditional grammars, linguistics re­solved to be non-evaluative,recording and describing language irrespectiveof prescriptive and proscriptive attitudes about "good" and "bad" or "cor­rect" and "incorrect." Literary studies has remained evaluative,despiteoccasional declarations that values tend to obscure or distort; after all, themere choice of a text for analysis and interpretation already implicates avalue judgment.

The goal of linguistics was the descriptionof a wholelanguageas a totalsystem, a characterization of its phonological, morphological, and gram­matical regularities in a compact and perspicuous format. The generativist

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arguments ranking "explanation" over "description," though an intenselypolemical issue for a time, did little to change this goal, witness the special­ized definition of "generating a sentence" as "assigning to it a structuraldescnption.t'? What was offered up as "explanation" usually turned out tobe a structural description, and a non-committal one at that. The goal ofliterary studies was to a large extent the advocacyof one'sinterpretationof aparticular work and, in conjunction, of the work itself as a meritoriousexemplar worthy of such explication.

Statements and claims in linguisticswere confirmedbydataas additionalsamples were collected and compared to a givenformulation. Since potentialdata are infinite, it could not be determined exactly how much data wereneeded to confirm or disconfirm; and linguistics has been replete withformulations that were later found to be premature. In literary studies, theimplicit standard for confirming an interpretation was the eloquenceof thescholar in persuading, convincing, and creating harmony and order.

Prospective linguists underwent trainingbymethod,the most noteworthybeing the techniques for eliciting, recording, and analyzingdata byfieldwork.The success of descriptive and "tagmemic" method in constructing gram­mars for remote languages, sometimes even without the aid of bilingualinformants, surely constitutes the most enduring and admirable achievementof the discipline. Prospective literary scholars were traditionally trainedbyimitatingthe interpretive performances of established scholars, includingtheir teachers, upon concrete works. Whereas linguistics was characterizedbycollectiveresearchamong teams and each contributor sought to expand orstipulate the accumulating model (or "grammar"), literary studies wasdevoted to individualresearch,and each contributor sought to overturnprevious interpretations of the same work.

Linguistics has had a reputation for being theory-centered,though this isnot fullyjustified in viewof the enormous practical achievements in descrip­tive fieldwork. Still, the theoretical aspects have been widely emphasized,partly in tribute to scientific decorum and partly to dissociate the linguistfrom the amateur or ordinary student of language. Literary studies, on theother hand, has had a reputation for beingpractice-centered,based firmly onthe activities of reading and interpreting rather than on the formulation ofabstract principles, though this too is not fullyjustified in view of the steadyinput from philosophy, aesthetics, history of ideas, and so on.

These, then, are some traditional contrasts between linguistics andliterary studies which help to account for their lack of direct interaction inpast decades. The occasion to rehearse them is the major shifts which, duringthe last twenty years or so, have profoundly unsettled the conventions onboth sides in ways that create an auspicious scenario for a fundamentalreconciliation. I would argue that these shifts have resulted more or lessspontaneously from the increasing pressure of unresolved problems gener­ated on both sides by the standing conventions I have outlined. Indeed, one

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might go so far as to argue that, if pursued without regard for the conse­quences, these conventions could lead to untenable positions and to a crisisbetween theory and practice. But scholars on both sides have admittedvarious compromises or modifications, albeit they've more often been im­plicit than programmatically declared.

Text and Discourse as "Linguistic" EntitiesThe celebrated distinction between language and discourse, or "langue" and"parole," or system and usage, is one of the most fundamental conceptionsof modern linguistics, but also one of the most disputatious. Though heprobably intended to protect linguistics from' absorption by neighboringsciences, the resolution at the end of Saussure's Cours- "the true and uniqueobject of linguistics is language studied in and for itself' -encouragedscholars to believe that the two sides could and should be kept separate. Yetas an empirical human phenomenon, the language itself is never given orpresent for observation, nor is it known to anyone speaker. What is givenandpresent is always the text or discourse, and whatever anyone speaker"knows" of the language must be an abstraction and summation fromexperiences with text and discourse. Even the isolated sentence treated as anobject for analysis is part of the discourse of the analysis; its context is notdissolved, but merely transformed.

To use the term "language" in the theoretical sense established bySaussure is to appeal to a hypothetical consensus among the community ofspeakers despite their inevitable diversities of knowledge and experience. Ineffect, linguistics enstated, without empirical justification, the credo that thisconsensus forms a de facto adequate basis for general statements and doesnot constitute a serious theoretical problem in its own right. This credoremained fairly intact as long as the main emphasis fell on those issues inphonology, morphology, and grammar that constitute focal points of regu­larity, but it became unsettled as research progressed toward less regularissues and devoted more attention to the domains of semantics and pragmat­ics.

A particularly forceful thrust into newwaters camewhen "grammar" wasreinterpreted by the generativists in the much more ambitious sense of acomplete set of structures and rules which describe all sentences of alanguage and exclude all non-sentences. The inaugural hope that a limiteddomain of pure "syntax" or grammar could be fenced off and describedindependently proved elusive as soon as research progressed beyond theintrospective cases hand-picked to fit the approach. The attempts to formu­late such a grammar encountered substantial diversitywhere consensus hadlong been assumed. It became clear that syntax alone could not supply theneeded constraints, and semantics and pragmatics would have to be inte­grated. Moreover, as long as the generativists did not have a conception oftext or discourse, they faced the daunting ifnot impossible task of attempting

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to state, at the level of the virtual system, all the constraints that could applyto actual utterances; or, failing that, of determining, by precise, motivated,and practicable criteria, just which constraints were or were not relevant.

The turn toward text linguistics and discourse analysis in the 1970s and1980swas thus to some degree lessan attempt to break genuinely new groundthan a response to pressure from problems inherent in "non-textual" (sen­tence) linguistics. Hence, early text linguists imagined that their task wouldbe to add a complementary set of rules and structures onto the "sentencegrammars" proposed so far, so as to account for the linkage of sentences intosequences, the distribution of pronouns, the formation of extended "referen­tial chains," and so on. This project only made the task that much harder, andthe resulting "text grammars" were yet more complicated and ambitious; thetask was still to state, at the level of the "text grammar" (abstract system), allthe constraints that could apply to texts.

The insight only gradually emerged that working at this level of abstrac­tion was self-defeating for text linguistics. The generalizations that can bemade about all textsare not terribly rich or enlightening, and the focal pointsofregularityinphonology, morphology and grammar constitute unmanageabledegrees of detail for text analysis. To attain more powerful and unifyingmethods, we would have to address types of texts and conditionsof textproductionandreception.We confront so much data in text and discourse thatexhaustive treatment, either in the minimal units of "structuralism" or theformal structures of "generativism," was neither readily feasible nor particu­larly informative. Instead, we would have to proceed from the focal points ofcontrol,such as topic, goal, and situational context, in order to determinewhich units or structures are the more relevantones for a given concretedomain.

In effect, the backlog of problems fomented by the original Saussuriandistinction finally had to be faced:3 linguistics would have to provide not justtheories and models of language ("langue," "grammar," and so on), buttheories and models which could show how knowledge of the language,including that gathered and "systematized" by linguistics itself, can emergefrom experience with text and discourse; and, conversely, how text anddiscourse are "actualized" in respect to the language as well as to otherrelevant cultural, social, and psychological factors. That linguists might bereluctant to embark on such an enterprise is readily understandable; but I seeno other prospect for material progress which could free the discipline fromthe stagnation and fragmentation we have witnessed in so many areas since1970.

In respect to the standing conventions outlined in Table 1 for generallinguistics, the turn to text and discourse entails a range of shifts, as charac­terized in Table 2. Though they emerged from different ambiences, "textlinguistics" and "discourse analysis" have converged today to the extent thatwe can treat them together for the purposes of a programmatic survey.t

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Insteadof the entire languageasan abstractvirtualsystem(repertoryofpotential choices)envisionedbygenerallinguistics,textlinguisticstakesthetextand discourseas the basicentities,where "discourse"straightforwardlydesignatesa set of texts directed to each other, especiallyin conversation..Thetextisneither anabstractsystemnoraconcreteartifact,butaninteractiveeventwhich itself has the character of an operatingactualsystem(array ofchoicesactuallymade). The current functionof a givenelementin the text­systemis determinedpartlybyits functionin the abstractsystemand partlybythe current functionsof co-occurringelementsin that context. Thus,thepotential meaning of a lexicalitem in the lexiconof English acts a set of"parameters" which are specifiedor adjustedwhen the item is assignedameaningwithina text-event.>

Whereasgeneral linguisticsuniformlyseeksdataof theentirelanguage,text linguisticsseeksdata providedby particulartext typesanddata regardingtheproductionandreceptionof texts.As noted above,thisshiftwasenforcedby the embarrassment of riches that texts provide and by the sparsity ofstatements that canbe made about all texts. To be sure, the shift bringsusfresh problems in formulatingworkable typologiesof texts and realisticmodelsof textprocessing,but impressiveheadwayhasbeenmadein numer­ous areas.f

Table2General LinguisticsVersusTextLinguisticsand DiscourseAnalysis

General Linguistics

language as virtual systemdata of the languagefieldwork/introspectionsynchronicideal speakerideal hearercommunity of all speakersgeneralrule as algorithmstyle as choicenon-evaluativedescription of whole languageconfirmation by datatraining by methodcollective researchtheory-centered

Text Linguistics/Discourse Analysis

text and discourse as actual systemdata about text type, production, and receptionfieldwork, participation, experiment, simulationdynamic, proceduraltext producer as social and cognitive agenttext receiver as social and cognitive agentcommunity as social complexbalance of general and specificstrategy as heuristicstyle as mode of discursivityevaluative by interactional criteriaapplication to discursive practicesconfirmation by social relevancetraining by method and engagementresearch as self-reflective activity

balance of theory with practice

An emphaticturn awayfromintrospectionasthe mainsourceofdatanotmerelyreinstatedfieldwork,but supplementeditwiththree furthermethods:participation,where the investigatorjoins in the practicesof discourseas asocial and cognitive agent, albeit one with special focuses and motives;

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experiment,where the investigatordesignscontrolleddiscursivetasks,suchasretellingastoryinone'sownwords;andsimulation,wherethe investigatorbuildsaworkingmodelto run on a computer-for example,a story-readingprogramthat can answerquestionsor makesummaries.

The essentiallystatic~nchronic perspectiveheldinplacesinceSaussureissupplantedbya perspectivewhichisnot simply"diachronic"(centeredonthe historyand changeof the wholelanguage)but dynamicandprocedural,centeredon the ongoingdiscursivepracticesas theyunroll in socialinterac­tion. The textlosesitsapparentobviousnessasawrittenartifactandisposedasa problemofhowit couldbe producedandreceivedwithrelativeeaseandsuccessdespite the undeniablecomplexitiesinvolved.Wemust assume,forexample,that memorystorage is not unlimitedbut efficientlyorganizedtoaccessand activatethe materialsneededfor the ongoingprocedures. Also,the "function"ofa textelement(inthesenseexplainedabove)mustfluctuateaccordingto the stage of the discoursewhere it occursand the contextualfactorsrelevantat that stage.

The idealspeakerandthe idealhearershiftto the textproducerandthe textreceiveras social and cognitiveagents-that is, as ''whole human beings"within a cultural setting who engagein discourse interaction in order topursuegoalsandto gainor provideaccessto knowledge.Thesenotions arestill abstractions but are far more proximate to real text producers andreceiversthanwerethe idealspeakerandhearer,whowereheldto "knowthelanguageperfectly"and to haveno "memorylimitations."?

In placeof the communityof allspeakers,whichgeneral linguisticshadassumedto be uniformandhomogeneous,wecontemplatethe communityasa social complexof diverse classesand groups, among whom power andsolidarity are unevenlydistributed within the "prevailing order." Theirrespectiveinterestsare typicallyassertedor deniedbymeansofdiscourse,sothat wecanexpectto findconflictsandcontradictionswheregenerallinguis­ticstended to seea harmoniousabstractsysteminwhich"everythingisheldin place" ("un systemeou tout se tient").

The generaloutlook that sought rules and regularities of the widestpossible scope is now being reshaped as a cautiouslymonitored balancebetweengeneralandspecific.Here,wedonot assumetoo readilythat our datarepresent the whole language,but we attempt to determine, by empiricalmeans, how far it maybe specificto a text type, social group, situationalsetting,and so on. Nor are specificdata consideredlessvaluable,informa­tive,or "scientific,"sincetheymateriallyhelp usbridgethe gulfbetweenthesingletext and the wholelanguage.

The rule of linguisticshad increasinglycome to be seen as a formalalgorithmfor creating, describingor transforming patterns in sentences,much as a mathematicaloperation or a computer program might do. Thestrategyof text linguistics,in contrast, isa proceduralheuristicfor managingtopicsand goalsin situations that, at somelevelof detail, are alwaysnovel.

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Whereas an algorithm is mechanical and guaranteed to yield the "correct"result but applies only within strict limits, a strategy does not alwayswork butis flexible and powerful enough to handle many contexts and needsf

The notion of styleas choicein linguistic stylistics is enriched by thenotion of styleas a mode of discursivitywith concrete social consequences.The strategic use of one style over another offers an important means forpursuing goals and providing or denying access to knowledge. Clearly, stylecan no longer be treated as a matter of language alone, but as a relationbetween language options and their characteristic motivations and effects.

The non-evaluativestance linguistics had adopted to dissociate itselffrom the prescriptive and proscriptive stance of traditional grammars isrevised to be evaluative,but by interactionalcriteriarather than vague atti­tudes about "good" and "bad" or "correct" and "incorrect." These criteriamust be demonstrably relevant to the success of communicative events. Atextual usage counts as efficientif it iseasyto handle, effectiveif it helps towardachieving a goal, and appropriateif it suits the occasion. "Good usage" and"correct grammar" may not qualify by such criteria, for example, if theyencourage complicated syntax or flowery diction that only makes the audi­ence confused and irritable.

If the goal of linguistics has usually been description(even when it wasoffered as "explanation"), the text linguistics and discourse analysis have thefurther goal of applicationtodiscursivepractices.Our highest priority wouldbe to enhancethefreedomof accessto knowledgethroughdiscourse,therebyaiding people to grasp both the world they live in and their opportunities todevelop themselves in education, career, and personality. "Knowledge of thelanguage" in the sense of general linguistics is obviously just one factor, andif it were indeed fully uniform or "homogeneous" it could not be the crucialone. However great the consensus about the whole language, discoursestrategies for expressing knowledge, obtaining cooperation, making a favor­able impression, and so on, are special skills quite unequally distributed,especially for commanding a range of styles.

The convention of confirminggeneralizations, rules, and so on by con­fronting them with data is of course still paramount in text linguistics, but aneven more crucial test is whether our findings are confirmedby socialrelevance.Ifwe are working to enhance the freedom of access to knowledge,then we must obtain concrete results in such areas as education, training,terminology, and translation. In this sense, we must take our own advice andstrive to make knowledge about text and discourse accessible to those whorequire it, such as designers of educational materials. A higher concern forthe readability and accessibility of our own discourse about discourse maycounterbalance the somewhat forbidding and abstruse quality of somelinguistic treatises in the past.

Similarly, the trainingbymethod put in place by descriptive linguisticsremains an integral part of our enterprise, though not in the stance of the

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"detached scientist" invoked,say,by Bloomfieldor Z.S. Harris. Instead,training must explicitlyinclude the prospective investigator's engagementwith the data in its socialcontext,and thus addressthe motivationfor doingone typeofresearchrather than another. Thedetachedstanceof traditionalscienceclaimedto be neutral and non-politicalbut in effectworkedin favorof the status quo and the institutional powersthat sustained it. Today,textlinguistics and discourse analysisare increasinglyengaged in a "critical"function of seeking and providingthe knowledgethat make it possible tochangethe status quo and resist manipulationsbyinstitutional powersnotmerelyin governmentandadministration,but in commerce,massmedia,andso forth.?

Collectiveresearchisat least as necessaryin text linguisticsas in generallinguistics,if not more so in viewof the expandinginterdisciplinaryscope.However, this research needs to be carried out as a self-reflectiveactivitycontinuallycontemplatingits ownconditions,includingthose of producingspecializeddiscourseabout generaldiscourse.10

Finally, the theory-centeredreputation linguisticshad taken on, espe­ciallyduring the ascendancyofgenerativism,isnowyieldingto a monitoredbalanceof theorywithpractice. Like that betweengeneral and specific,thisbalanceisenforcedbythe sheernecessityofdesigninganytheoryat all,sincewithout referenceto practicethesetofpossibletheoriesoftextand discourseis unmanageablybroad. Thus,a theoryof textasa formalarrayof the "deepstructures" of its sentenceswouldnot merelybe explosivelycomplicatedbutonlydistantlyrelated,say,to amodelofreadabilityforschoolbooks.Atheoryof text in terms of cognitiveprocessing,in contrast, is relativelyproximateand has alreadybeen shownto havepracticalrelevancein this area.I 1

The shiftssummarizedin Table2andbrieflyoutlined in this sectionaretherefore indicativenot ofsomecoincidenceoftrendyfadsbut ofan integralevolutionrequired forsignificantprogressbyanystandards,includingthoseto whichlinguisticsitselfis fundamentallycommitted. To complainthat thenewer theories and modelsdo not meet predetermined criteria of abstract­nessand formalityis to perpetuate the folkwisdomof "sciencein avacuum"that drawsno conclusionswhensciencemakespossiblethe voracioustech­nologicaldepredation of the planet and the imminence of global nucleardestruction. We will need a reputable and comprehensivebody of data,issues,and projectsbeforewecanstate what criteria are in factappropriateto the imposingtasks ahead.

Literary Theory"Literary theory"has becomea cover-termfor an increasinglydiffusetrendawayfrom a concern with the individual text toward a concern with thegeneralconditionsof literature or "literariness." To somedegree,this trendmightappear to be the complementofthat describedfor the shifttowardtextand discoursein linguistics,sincegeneralityisbeingloweredin the first case

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and raised in the second. Moreover,we find some commonalitiesin theemergingterminologieson the linguisticandliteraryside:not just "text"and"discourse" themselves but "discourse analysis," "textuality,""intertextuality,"and so on. However,the usesof these termsdivergeas dothe contextsin whichtheyappear. Indeed,one canfindtwocontemporane­ousintroductionsto"DiscourseAnalysis"withvirtuallynocommonsources.12

And in terms of evolution,the parallelsare again imprecise. Literarytheory resolvedto strip awaythe obviousnessand routine of literarystudiesand its "object" and to turn whatever came to light "underneath" into atheoretical problem for new inquiry. This sensitivitytoward submergedproblemsat the verybaseof the disciplinecameearlierand developedmorescope and momentum in literary studies than in linguistics. The majormotivefor the differencewassurelythe complexitythe literarytextpresentsto professional inquiry, as compared to the simple isolated sentences sopopular in linguisticdiscussions,such as "the farmer killed the duckling"(Sapir)or "John iseasyto please"(Chomsky).Literaryscholarscouldeasilysee from the enormousacuityexpendedon any"greatwork" that the issuesinvolvedwerecomplex,thoughnot in the senseof linguistics,for exampleasanagglomerationofminimalunitsor aderivationofmultiplesentencesfrom"deep structure.

TheSaussurianresolutionthat "the trueanduniqueobjectoflinguisticsislanguagestudiedinandforitself' hadnocounterpartin literarystudies.Toproclaimthat its"true anduniqueobjectisliteraturestudiedinandforitself'would have seemed either gratuitous (if one is denyingthe notion, whichnobodyhas seriouslyaffirmed,that literature should be studied merelyassource material for history,theologyand so on), or else arrogant (if one isordainingthat literatureshouldbecutoff,apriori,fromthehistoryofcultureand ideas). Moreover,itwouldbe premature to implythat wein facthaveawell-definednotion of "literature in and for itself." On the contrary, theattempt to drawbordersaround it seemssingularlyunproductive;it ishardto imaginea singlehuman concernor themewhichhasnot beenevokedbyliterature at some time.

The early thrust towardliterarytheory-as exemplifiedby Formalism,NewCriticism,andsuchschematicsasWellekandWarren'sTheoryor Frye'sAnatomy-were motivatedchieflybya desire for an explicitand organizedmethodology,whetherthe inspirationcamefromlinguistics(aswithFormal­ism) or mythology(as with Frye). Whereas intuition was increasinglyenshrinedin linguisticsbythe generativists,itwasincreasinglyquestionedinliterary studies, albeit muchmore gradually. The institutions of literatureand itsstudywereafterallvastlylargerandmoreentrenchedthan linguisticseven at its highest points; and literary theory did not enjoy the addedadvantagefor the generativistschool,whicharrivedon the scenejust whenmanynewlinguisticsprogramsand departmentswereopeningand got in onthe ground floor,as it were.

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But the truly decisive momentum of literary theory that changed it froman abstruse specialization within a few "comparative literature" programsinto an internationally prominent topic in a great majority of language andliterature programs came when the search for methodology turned into acomprehensive engagement with the problematics of literature as a whole,especially with those that were making the search so arduous and elusive.The accessibilityof the literary text as awritten artifact "on the page" -a viewwhich Formalism and New Criticism had if anything reinforced-was in­creasingly put in question, and an unwonted participant in the literarytransaction took center stage: the reader,whose role had for centuries beentacitly occupied by any scholar or critic who wished to assume it. This readerbecame the focal territory of all the complexities and perplexities of litera­ture in an engagement with the text that displaced "the text itself' as the focusof attention and the phenomenon to be accounted for.

Probably because their first interest in literature had been mainlyhistorical, most of the earlier champions of the "reader," such as Jauss, Iser,and Fish, retained the author as a concrete personage and point of authorityfor arguing that one wayof reading wasmore suitable than another -that theissues uncovered were intended and designed by Baudelaire, Fielding, orMilton. Even where other frameworks of authority were offered, such asFreudian psychoanalysis (Holland), Marxist theory (Jameson) and feminism(Millett), the real author characteristically remained in place, though less incontrol than implied by the historical groundings-for example, as a locus ofpsychic drives, class conflicts, or sexual politicking.

Once the act of reading was acknowledged to portend complexproblematics, the act of writing was bound to be reconsidered along similarlines. In the mid-1960s, E.D. Hirsch could still argue that writing was"determinate" but reading was "whimsical" and "lawless," without sensingthe incoherence of his position or the potential of his methods of "valida­tion" for burying the literariness of litera ture beneath a naive and ponderousscholarly apparatus whose "scientific" credentials rested on the misguidednotion, borrowed from philosophy of science (Popper), that one can test andvalidate hypotheses without inquiring where they come from. 13

But by the mid-1970s, the model of a precisely circumscribed authorseemed incongruous vis-a-visthe influential models of a perplexed and self­doubting reader, especially when we contemplate such authors as Rousseauor the English Romantics. Hence, literary theory finallybegan to turn fromthe realauthortoward modelsof theauthorwhich any real author would fitonly approximately. Here, authorship is more a performance and a goal thana state or attribute of a person. No longer shackled to historical biography,this model of the author could only come from engagements with literarytexts. If,as Iser effusivelyshowed, the text entails an "implicit reader," 14thenit can equally well entail an "implicit author" who is just as much a literaryconception as isa fictional character in a playor novel. The heavyinvestment

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of traditional studies in biographical documentation tends to dull ourawareness of the degree to which our notion of all literary authors flowsfirstand foremost from their work, whether they conspicuously centered theiropus on creating a vision of themselves (Whitman) or whether they werecryptically reticent about themselves (Shakespeare).

The overall progression of this theorizing thus relentlessly led to aprogrammatic destabilizing of the classic triad of text, reader, and author upto the point where uncertainty, ambiguity, figurality, and the like were nolonger obstacles for the scholar to resolve, but essential factors to be enactedor even celebrated. Startling disruptions of academic decorum becamefashionable, though chiefly by authorities who, like Bloom and Hartman,could afford them by virtue of their prior careers as traditional scholars.PYet, in a certain sense thewheel had merelycome fullcircle. The longstandingnotion of the literary text as an "object made out of a language" had beenproblematic from the start but had supported an expansive enterprisepurporting to analyze, interpret, and explain such "objects" in emulation ofphilosophical, historical, and scientific methods. The obvious fact that thisenterprise did not seem to be producing definitive results was either ignoredor else explained as a temporary inconvenience we could eliminate when wehad gathered enough examples and perfected our methods-a belief stillunderlying Hirsch's project of validation which, thankfully, is not on theagenda (not even on his).

In contrast, the insight that literature is not a set of such "Objects" but amode of discursivity and engagement, though far more appropriate andproductive, could not have seemed auspicious as long as "discourse" itselfwas not a prime theoretical entity either in literary studies or in philosophy,history, and science. The expanding preoccupation with discourse in variousguises-within "ordinary language" philosophy, historiography, ethnogra­phy, communication, conversational analysis, social psychology, cognitivescience, psychotherapy, pedagogy, and many more areas-created an auspi­cious ambience in which literary studies could be reconciled with what italways had been but had often felt uncomfortable about being.

Today, there is nothing particularly outlandish in asserting that "litera­ture" is a communicative domain for creating and contemplating alternativeworlds; even a realistic or documentary reconstruction of reality shows us the"real" as one among a set of alternatives. Or in asserting that poetry extendsthis principle to language itself bypracticing alternative uses, or bydisplayingordinary uses as one alternative. Moreover, the recognition that the aestheticaspect of this engagement arises from the persistence of multiple intercon­nected significances means that interpretation cannot be the imposition ofharmony and order alone, but the enactment of a dialectic between harmonyand conflict,between order and incongruity,betweenreal and potential-whichbrings us to much the same standpoint as discourse analysis. This dialecticrefers to and subsumes the diversity of elements without negating it, so that

Closingthe Gap 437

the language material deployed for a given "style" cannot subsist indepen­dently from the "content" or "message" yet is not identical with it either asmeans or as effect. Similarly,values do not obscure or distort but constituteboth precondition and ambience of the engagement.

If it follows that literary theory should recognize and account for this"alterna tivity" and dialectic in its models of text, reader, and author, then thedevelopment I have sketched seems reasonable, if not indeed compelling.But we will need a different epistemology which can only emerge from ahigher-level consolidation of the models in literary theory (and in discourseanalysis as well). Close scrutiny reveals a disquieting number of literarytheorists (the examples are too glaring to need being named here) for whomtheory is just one more means for personal aggrandization, if not for anoutright personality cult; and the old battle over who has the "right"interpretation threatens to be succeeded by an equally acrimonious battleover who has the "right" model of author, text, or (especially) reader.

In sum, we can indicate the shift from traditional literary studies towardliterary theory with the parameters shown in Table 3.

Table 3Shifts Between Literary Studies and Literary Theory

Literary Studies

literary text as artifactthe canontraditionhistoricalreal author[scholar/reader]school/movementspecial/uniqueconventions of genrestyle as ornamentationstable value of textadvocacy of interpretationconfirmation by eloquencetraining by imitationindividual researchpractice-centered

Literary Theory

literary discourse as transactionselection and revision of canonliterary institutionsprogrammaticmodel of author; literary productionmodel of reader; literary reception"horizon"innovation vs. expectationinstability of genrestyle as mode of literarinesstransient value of engagementadvocacy of model of literary communicationconfirmation by insighttraining by method (1)empirical research (1)balance of theory with practice

Admittedly, the simplifications involved here are especially acute, becauseliterary theorists place a much higher value on individualism than do textlinguists.

The text asawritten (and presumably closed) artifact is "decentered" intodiscourseas an open-ended transaction,which for some theorists (such asFoucault) extends to broad social and institutional frameworks. The term"intertextuality" has gained some currency for the vision of the "open" text

438 JournalofAdvancedComposition

asameetingpointor ''weaving''ofother texts.Suchavisionwastraditionallyeither eschewedas detrimentalto the reputation ofa givenworkand authoror else relegatedto "influencestudies"of a somewhatantiquarian cast.

The canonas the establishedand acceptedcatalogueofworksbecomesthe issueofhowandwhycertainworksor authorswereselected,andhowandwhyrevisionsof the canon came about. The contours of the canon wereconsiderablyrelaxed,andnewattentionwasaccordedto "trivial"and"popu­lar" literature as part of groundworkon which"high" literature rested. Arecent intriguingrevisionhas been the authors who rose in fashion in thewakeof literarytheoryitselfbecause,likeRousseauor Shelley,theyso aptlyillustrated the perplexitiesforeseen by such models as those of the now­scattered "Yale school.,t16

The notion of literature simply being handed down by tradition isdisplacedby an examinationof the waysit is mediated and channeled byliterary institutions,includingnot just the "academy"of literary studies inuniversitiesand institutes, but the policiesof publishers and editors, theawardingof literaryprizes,and so on.I?

The historicalorientation, which projected a view of literature in achronologicalprogressionof authors and works,shifts toward a program­maticorientation that seesliterature as a complexofprojectsfor navigatingthe complexitiesof literarycommunication.The orderlinessofchronologi­calmethodsis foundto be a liabilityin disguisingtrendsand currentsacrossdiversetime periods,suchas the one linkingGerman "Expressionismus"ofthe 20thcenturywiththe "Barock"of the 17th. Eventhe visionofan authorinfluencinganother whocameearlier(suchas Shelley'SCencias a tribute toBrowning)has had a certainvogue:thoughhistoricallyperverse,it helpsusto perceivea richerorchestrationofvoicesamongalternativemeanstowardsimilarends.

For the motivessketchedabove,therealauthorwasgradually,andbynomeansunanimously,recastasthe moreor lessgeneralmodelof theauthor.Acorollarywasthe emergenceofliteraryproductionasacategoryfordescribingwhat functionssucha modelmightassume,and in sometheorizing(suchasFoucault's), cameto dominateover the author,whowasprogressively"de­centered." Thisoccurred,I havesuggested,in symmetrywiththe prior shiftwherebythescholarceasedto beautomaticallyenstatedasreaderandamodelof thereaderwaspropounded. Here,wewitnessacorrespondingturn towardthe categoryofliteraryreception,or, inGermany,"aestheticsofreception."18

If the schoolor movementhadbeen a traditionalmeansof categorizing,the more complex notion of "horizon" (to borrow an influential termpropagated byJauss)subsumesall the factorsbearingon what authors andworkswereexpectedto involve.Whereas"school"or "movement"suggestan often misleadingBunity,"horizon" suggeststhe backgroundor frame,with the work in the foregroundpartlyfulfillingand partlyrevisingit. Thisdynamicconceptionaltered the traditional concentrationon the specialor

Closing the Gap 439

uniquequalities of the single work in favor of a dialecticbetweeninnovationand expectation. The specific achievement was thereby seen not as somemiraculous "aborigination" or divine inspiration, but as a strategic andhighly skilled modification of prior systems of shaping and sense-making.

If the conventionsof genrehad been stressed for classificatory or peda­gogical motives, the instabilityofgenrenow rose into view:the valid work doesnot merely conform to its genre but modifies it (such as Sterne's TristramShandy)or cuts across genres (Joyce's Ulysses).In this outlook, the genre iscontinually in the process of being constituted and reconstituted and istherefore more a part of the problem of classifying literature than thesolution.

The concept of styleasornamentationmoves toward the concept of styleasa mode of literariness,one mode of discursivity among many others, but ahighly influential one in some cultures. Like genre, a style requires a dialecticbetween innovation and expectation in order to assume a distinctive identity,and thus also functions more as problem than solution, especially when anauthor (like Hemingway) becomes fixated in the public estimation and isforced to perpetuate an early style, or conversely, when an author (like theShelley of TheCenci)abruptly repudiates his own style in seeking out anothergenre.

Consistent with these shifts, the project of placing a stablevalueon thetextevolves into an increasing sensibility of the transientvalueof theengage­ment with the text, a process that continually raises the problem of valuewithout enabling us to resolve it in any enduring or large-scale manner. Wemayvalue a work when it innovates or when it meets our expectations, eventhough neither innovation nor expectedness is a value by itself. We mayappreciate a genre or style without in any way esteeming all of its instances.We may alter our evaluations between different readings of the same work.And so on.

The advocacyof an interpretation,and implicitly also of the text, is lessvital now than the advocacyofamodelof literarycommunication.Ifwe are tocontain the danger of the old quarrel over the "right" reading of a poem beingmerely supplanted by a quarrel over the "right" model of poem­readers-something of the sort is sporadically and indecisively fought out inthe pages of CriticalInquiryor NewLiteraryHistory-we need to refine ourcriteria. Confirmation by eloquence is still quite fashionable, especiallywhen the model itself is as arcane and convoluted as Bloom's or Hartman's.The alternative would be confirmationby insightvia the modes of literaryengagement that the model brings to consciousness, and this is by natureinclusive rather than exclusive.

Also still much in vogue is trainingbyimitation,though in their eagernessto make their models attractive, prominent literary theorists seem paradoxi­cally resolved to bankrupt any potential following in advance with the sheerinimitable brilliance of their performances. Trainingbymethod remains in

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fairly rudimentary stages in comparison, say, to the fieldwork of linguisticsand discourse analysis, but it is clearly on the advance.

Furthermore, the tradition of individualresearchis still firmly in place,doubtless because the complexity of literary communication seems handiestto master with a personal blend of introspection and demonstration. Agroupof theorists may reach some critical mass of consensus, as in the "Yaleschool," but this same group reveals complexvariety unravelling uniformity(Bloom and Hartman not being "deconstructionists" in any sense like deMan and Hillis Miller). In most institutions, the prospect of empiricalresearchby teams is still remote or at best marginal. The "InternationalSociety for the Empirical Study of Literature," founded in 1987, is mainly agroup of sociologists, psychologists, and continental Europeans workingoutside major literature programs, where their impact on the daily practicesof using literature is not likely to be significant.

If the practice-centeredtendencies of former times are slowly movingtoward a balanceof theorywithpractice,dizzyingvacillations can yet be felt.In the first place, the heavycommitment to theory isbyno means universallymotivated by an intention to transform practice, and in some cases (forexample Bloom) such an intention is expressly repudiated. In the secondplace, the practice offered by numerous theorists to demonstrate theirmodels retains a personal touch and blends together how people read withhow they should read. For example, an empirical project designed to testIser's model of the "implicit reader" found that ordinary readers do notadjust to "gaps" in the text, but ignore or distort them and cling to whateverdoes meet their expectations. 19 The "implicit reader" reads so much like Iserhimself that we will need extensive bridging if the model is to be widelypracticable.

Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis Compared to Literary TheoryByjuxtaposing the shifts categorized in Tables 2 and 3, we can compare thetrends in text linguistics and discourse analysison the one hand and in literarytheory on the other, as shown in Table 4. Though several disparities can stillbe detected, we by no means discover the stark contrasts indicated in Tables1,2, and 3.

Closingthe Gap 441

Table 4Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis Compared to Literary Theory

Text Linguistics/Discourse Analysis Literary Theory

text and discourse as actual system literary discourse as transactiondata about text type,productionand reception selection and revision of canonfieldwork, participation, experiment, simulation literary institutionsdynamic, proceduraltext producer as social and cognitive agenttext receiver as social and cognitive agentcommunity as social complexbalance of general and specificstrategy as heuristicstyle as mode of discursivityevaluative by interactional criteriaapplication to discursive practicesconfirmation by social relevancetraining by method and engagementresearch as self-reflective activity

balance of theory with practice

programmaticmodel of author, literary productionmodel of reader; literary reception"horizon"innovation vs. expectationinstability of genrestyle as mode of literarinesstransient value of engagementmodel of literary communicationconfirmation by insighttraining by method (1)empirical research (1)

balance of theory with practice

Text and discourseare now accepted as central entities on both sides,although theses terms have a wide range of interpretation. For discourseanalysis, the emphasis falls squarely on the social and cognitive aspects, whilein literary theory the social ones are emphasized only by the political "left"in cultural anthropology, materialism, feminism, Marxism and so on (Fou­cault, Millett, Jameson); and the cognitive ones mainly from the standpointof phenomenology and gestalt theory (Iser) and sociology of knowledge(Jauss, Bleich). Some conspicuous branches of "poststructuralism" promul­gate a curiously convoluted and self-directed notion of "text" or "discourse"from which societyisessentiallyabsent and cognition is transfixed in "aporias"(for example, the erstwhile "Yale school"). The same limits apply if wecompare the view of textproducerand text receiveras social and cognitiveagentswith the modelsof authorand reader,and of literaryproductionandreception. Again, literary theory has not pursued the social and cognitiveaspects as extensively and consistently as might be desired to enhance orclarify the design of models or to estimate which of two models is moreplausible.

The sources of materials are also somewhat incommensurate, in that textlinguistics is in principle concerned with alltext types,whereas literary theoryisstill selective,albeit broadening considerablybeyond the traditional "canon"byaddressing "trivial" and "popular" literature. Also, data about productionand reception are central to text linguistics but still mainly speculative inliterary theory, perhaps for motives ofexpedience. Fish's "affective stylistics,"for example, is clearly at variance with the findings on real reading inprojecting a word-for-word linear procedure and ignoring the hierarchical

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processing that buffers real readers from the small-scale "surprises" Fishdeems so significant.

A particularly marked contrast can be seen between the data-gatheringtechniques, which, as noted above, are both empirical and diversified in textlinguistics and discourse analysis but still firmly ensconced within literaryinstitutions for literary theory. The "Empirical Society" represents a note­worthy counter-trend, but its potential to exert a major impact on thoseinstitutions is still very much an open question. 20

The parallel between a dynamic,proceduralorientation and aprogram­matic one is more compatible, though with some differences in degree andfocus. Literary theory has adopted a wealth of programmatic approachesthat are certainly more dynamic not merely than traditional literary studiesbut than such early theoretical trends as Formalism and New Criticism. Theextent to which they could also be called procedural is less readily evident,since, as I remarked, the striving for eloquence and brilliance tends toobscure the underlying procedures of the actual reading.

The concept of the communityassocialcomplexis in principle relevantfor the concept of "horizon"in that literary expectations are current amonga substratum of that complex. Yet, the status of that substratum within thewhole is still much less well-defined than would be desirable in view of thewidespread but largely planless use of literature in public education.

The balanceof generaland specificin text linguistics is only partlycompatible with the balance of innovationversusexpectationin literarytheory and is otherwise concerned with a whole range intermediary con­structs between the whole language and the single text-text type, register,style, context, situation, and so on-which form the framework within whichanything may be more or less innovative or expected.

The concept of strategyasheuristicwould be helpful for appraising boththe instabilityofgenreand the diversity of style,since for the text producer,both genre and style are more projects or targets than facts or artifacts. Wecould thus envision a style or genre as a complex of strategies guiding textproduction along with the more general cognitive and linguistic strategiesaddressed by empirical research so far. The two conceptions of style areaccordingly quite proximate: neither something in the language nor in thetext, but a modeof discursivitywhich may be literary, non-literary, or quasi­literary (such as advertising jingles).

If discourse is evaluatedbyinteractionalcriteria,we can apply the sameoutlook to askwhether the traditional values in literary studies were relevantor favorable for the interaction of authors and readers; and considerableevidence suggests that they were so only in special circles but not in generaleducation. If values are served up as predecided and bound up with a single"correct" reading, then the reader's opportunity for a self-reliant valueofengagementis abridged or even alienated. Literary theory provides goodreason to expect major advantages from encouraging readers to discover

Closingthe Gap 443

their own values and readings and to acknowledge the dependency of valueon the richness of those readings. This project would constitute oneapplicationto discursivepracticesthat would also support an advocacyfor amodelof literarycommunicationas the development and enrichment of theself and the imagination. This would clearly constitute confirmationboth bysocialrelevanceand by increased insight.

As remarked above, trainingbymethod is more advanced in discourseanalysis than in literary theory, mainly because of the diverse traditionsinherited from general linguistics on the one hand and from literary studieson the other. The degree to which the investigator engages with the methodis at present disputed on both sides, though "critical engagement" is rapidlygaining ground.

The prospects are favorable for the reconciliation in research of a self­reflectiveorientation with an empiricalone, but much is still to be done. Indiscourse analysis, empiricity has tended to discourage self-reflection insome quarters, but the balance has been impressivelyeven-handed in most.21

In contrast, the intense self-reflections in literary theory so far have seldomled to a genuinely empirical alignment that could, among other things,provide material criteria for the advocacy of models.

Finally, the balanceoftheorywithpracticeisyet a bit uneasy on both sides,but the signs are encouraging, and the isolation of theory from practice sooften witnessed in the past is barely admissible today. What remains to beachieved, however, is the alignment with the wider social practices of dis­course beyond the bounds of the disciplines themselves, and I shall concludeby briefly examining this point.

Practice as a Social ProblematicDiscourse is not merely something that people learn to produce and receive,but something that mediates most other modes of learning. Therefore, theneed for application to practice is nowhere more urgent than in the institu­tions of socialization and education. The apparent order of "curriculums"and "lessons plans" is usually based on a naive, reified categorization of thesubject matter into "content" -for example, history as a batch of people,places, and dates, rather than a social and political evolution followingdistinctive processes of power versus solidarity.

From the vantage point of discourse analysis, the chief defect in social­ization and education is the failure to appreciate the full role of discursivityas the central mode for accessing knowledge and to draw the consequences.Substantial research, notably at the Center for the Study of Reading (Univer­sity of Illinois, Urbana), has been able to demonstrate the diffuse, ofteninefficient design of such materials as textbooks and lectures. Viewed apartfrom discourse, facts and figures are all too easily imagined to be straightfor­ward little packets of knowledge waiting to be collected. In discourse,however, they are merely incidental points that become meaningful and

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memorable only in rich contexts, which the learners have traditionally beenleft to design on their own; and if they did not prosper at this sophisticatedtask, they were classed as "average learners," which in effect meant that theyshould not expect any special consideration from the educational system.This large middle group was treated offhandedly for not being "intelligent"or "bright" in the peculiarly narrow and uncreative senses generated by asystem that hoarded facts and figures but could not meaningfully communi­cate them in relevant contexts.

In the "language programs" of educational institutions (English Depart­ments in the US), the traditional preoccupation with a certain quasi-literarybrand of fastidious ("correct") prose all but eclipsed the realistic develop­ment of those language skills for which the majority of learners (the "aver­age") already had the prerequisites by virtue of speaking the language.22

Most uses of literature were either historical (people, places, and dates) or,where interpretation was involved, authoritarian. The total message trans­mitted to learners was that they were not fully incompetent to read or write,though, by dint of strenuous exertions, perhaps able to make a reasonablygood showing now and then on an essay or test.

The imperative today is clear enough, however arduous and remote itsrealization: an integrated, discourse-centered approach to the entire educa­tional experience, placing the language program in the pivotal (and ratherdaunting) position of training the discourse skills for navigating both ineveryday life and in the several domains of schooling itself. For example,geometry could be approached as a "special purpose discourse" about asystem of idealized spatial relations,23and English teachers would work withgeometry teachers to coordinate their own focus. In such an environment,the teacher's task would no longer be to dispense isolated facts and corrector punish deviations from these, but to serve as expert and consultant withinthe discourse about integrated domains where a set of facts can becomemeaningful and instrumental in the production of further knowledge.

The university level isof course the ambience where this design must firstbe developed, but also where it must first be put into practice. Currentprograms for ''writing across the curriculum" and for the investigation ofspecial-purpose language and terminology are steps in this direction, but amuch more sweeping reorganization and coordination willbe needed beforediscursivity attains the pivotal role it merits. Everyspecialized area needsboth explicit coursework bylearners in the appropriate discourse and regularreassessment by experts of the prevailing terminology.24 Here too, theuniversity must develop model educational materials that can support ageneral reorientation in lower-level schooling.

If my assessments of the recent shifts in the second and third sections ofthis paper seem unduly optimistic or premature, and my projections in thefourth and fifth sections unduly expansive and ambitious, I would respondthat more traditional assessments and projections have been slanted in the

Closingthe Gap 445

opposite direction. Consistently perpetuating routines, pursuing mosaics ofincidental subtasks, and taking it for granted that theory and practice werealigned as well as they needed to be, has allowed the disciplines based onlanguage to drift ever deeper into a unacknowledged crisis wherein neithertheory nor practice seems adequate to a very conspicuous crisis in globalcommunication arising in the wake of the information explosion. Moreover,the continuation of ineffectual or authoritarian routines saves labor at theupper end (teacher or expert) only to waste it at the lower end (learner ornovice). It has thus not been realized that the substantial proportion of"average" result or even of failure in socialization and education is due notto low intelligence, lack of aptitude, or laziness, but to fundamentallyunbalanced and ineffectual discourse, and is therefore not a natural productof a competitive system but a egregious denial of the personal freedomsguaranteed in principle by modern democracies. For everyone's sake,including ours, we must henceforth do all we can to bring about freedom ofaccess to knowledge, in and through discourse. 25

Universityof FloridaGainesville,Florida

Notes

1Around 1880, linguistics became distinct from philology through the work of majorscholars like William Dwight Whitney, Jan Ignacy Niecislaw Baudouin de Courtenay, MikolaiHabdanc Kruszewski, and Henry Sweet; and the study of modem language and literatureseparated off from ancient through the creation of actual university chairs, a development forwhich linguistics would still have to wait quite a while.

2Quoted from Chomsky,Aspects9. The widespread misreading of the term in the sense of"produce" was probably desired-for example, to shore up the thin claims that generativegrammar captured the "creativity" of language. Chomsky (Aspects8 and Syntactic17) offered"technical devices for expressing a system of recursive processes" as "an explicit formulation ofcreative processes." Yet, recursion is the exact opposite of creation and just churns out the samething at fixed increments. The real creativity of language, as shown, say, in poetry, falls in a majortrouble zone of generative theory, namely on the borders of the "grammatical."

3Aside from Peter Hartmann, fewgeneral linguists or text linguists appear to have foreseenthis development.

4Clear evidence for his convergence can be seen in the consensus of authors in the Tenth­Anniversary issue of the journal Text (van Dijk [ed.] 1990).

5See Beaugrande Text,Discourseand TextProduction.6For surveys, see Beaugrande "Design," "General," and TextProduction;Heinemann and

Viehweger; Beaugrande and Dressler.7Chomsky (Aspects3) attributes this "idealization" to "the founders of modern general

linguistics," but I could not find anything like it in the writings of Saussure, Sapir, Bloomfield,Firth, or Hartmann, who surely count as founders. At most, Hjelmslev contemplated "eliminat­ing" "accidents" and "disturbances" "in the exercise of language" (in "parole"), but he had no"speaker" or "hearer" at all (94).

80 n this distinction, see especially van Dijk and Kintsch.9See for instance Chilton; Wodak; van Dijk; Fowler.

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lOFor an application of this proposal to general linguistics, see Beaugrande, LinguisticTh~. .

1See for example Riley, et al. and van Dijk and Kintsch.12Por example, Coulthard (linguistic) and Macdonnel (literary).13Por an astute critique of this notion and an impressive project directed byHerbert Simon

for modeling scientific creativity through simulation, see Langley et al,14The exact translation of the original German title of Iser's (1972) book, whereas the

"impliedreader" in the English version (1975) goes further in suggesting an act of projecting.15lndeed, Wellek and Warren had listed Bloom and Hartman as model practitioners of

close reading!16For Rousseau, see de Man; for Shelley, Bloom et al.17Compare the papers in the first issue of volume 18 of Poetics(1989).18Seminal papers collected in Warning.19See Homberg and Rossbacher. Oddly, Iser told me he considered this study a confirma­

tion of his model.200r indeed its intentionto do so. A resolution that I submitted in collaboration with S.J.

Schmidt and Gerhard Rusch at the first general meeting calling for the support of emancipatoryuses of literature was violently attacked by the planned organizers of the second general meetingand was tabled without a vote.

21See for example Atkinson and Heritage, and Drew and Heritage.22For a basic textbook designed to work on that basis, see Beaugrande Writing.23A pilot study for geometry is developed in Beaugrande, "Knowledge." Papert's excellent

LOGO project for learning mathematics by computer simulation does not recognize the role ofdiscourse, probably because the child is mainly self-communicating by writing simple programson a terminal.

24See Beaugrande, "Communication."25This treatise was originally an invited presentation to the English department at the

University of South Florida, Tampa; later presentations were made at the Universities ofAlicante (Spain), Irbid (Jordan), Alexandria (Egypt), and Budapest, and to the WienerSprachgesellschaft (Austria), all of whom I wish to thank for their kindness and interest. Thebasis for the line of argument, along with more extensive documentation than I can provide here,can be found in my two recent volumes, CriticalDiscourse:A Surveyof ContemporaryLiteraryTheoristsand LinguisticTheory:TheDiscourseo/FundamentalWorks,as well as in the survey, nowin preparation, A NewIntroductiontotheStudyof TextandDiscourse(with Wolfgang Dressler).

Works Cited

Atkinson, J. Maxwell, and John Heritage, eds. Structures0/SocialAction:Studiesin Conversa­tionalAnalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.

Baudouin de Courtenay, J. Otryvkiiz lektsiipo fonetikiei morfologiirusskogojazyka. Kazan:Kazanskom Universitet, 1882.

Beaugrande, Robert de. "Communication and Freedom of Access to Knowledge as an Agendafor the Special Purpose Language Movement." Fachsprache10 (1991): xx-xx.

-. CriticalDiscourse:ASurveyofContemporaryLiteraryTheorists.Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1988.

-. "Design Criteria for Process Models of Reading." ReadingResearchQuarterly16 (1980-81): 261-315.

--a "General Constraints on Process Models of Language." Languageand Comprehension.Ed. Jean-Francois Ie Ny, and Walter Kintsch. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1982. 179-92.

--a "Knowledge and Discourse in Geometry: Intuition, Experience, Logic." ZeitschriftfUrPhonetik,SprachwissenschaftundKommunikationsforschung6 (1991): 771-827.

Closingthe Gap 447

-. LinguisticTheory:TheDiscourseof FundamentalWorks.London: Longman, 1991.

-. Text,Discourse,and Process:Towarda MultidisciplinaryScienceof Texts. Norwood, NJ:Ablex, 1980.

-. TextProduction:Towarda Scienceof Composition.Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1984.

-. "Toward the Empirical Study of Literature: A Synoptic Sketch of a New'Society.'" Poetics18 (1989): 7-27.

-. WritingStepbyStep:EtJSjStrategiesfor WritingandRevising.New York: Harcourt, 1985.

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